Now that summer is almost upon us in the US, employers and those in other industries, like health care and medical travel, as well as the travel industry itself, should be fully aware of these facts.

Only time will tell before we have native cases of Zika here. You must be prepared.

I am willing to work with any broker, carrier, or employer interested in saving money on expensive surgeries, and to provide the best care for their injured workers or their client’s employees.

Ask me any questions you may have on how to save money on expensive surgeries under workers’ comp.

I am also looking for a partner who shares my vision of global health care for injured workers.

I am also willing to work with any health care provider, medical tourism facilitator or facility to help you take advantage of a market segment treating workers injured on the job. Workers’ compensation is going through dramatic changes, and may one day be folded into general health care. Injured workers needing surgery for compensable injuries will need to seek alternatives that provide quality medical care at lower cost to their employers. Caribbean and Latin America region preferred.

Transforming Workers’ Comp Blog is now viewed all over the world in over 250 countries and political entities. I have published nearly 300 articles, many of them re-published in newsletters and other blogs.

According to two reports on NBCNews.com, the Zika virus is more dangerous than health officials first thought.

The first report from last week can be found here. The second report says that Zika goes to the brain, and causes nerve damage similar to that caused by multiple sclerosis. Zika destroys developing nerve cells.

What does this mean to you, the medical travel facilitators working in Central and South America?

It means that maybe, money spent to attract patients to your countries, might first be better spent cleaning up your slums and cities that have standing water and debris that can be a breeding ground for the mosquitoes that carry the disease.

It also means that you must work closely with your government agencies to assure that medical travel facilities are clean and prepared to deal with the disease, should there be patients who come down with the disease while getting medical care there.

Readers of this blog know that from time to time, I have had to criticize those in the workers’ comp industry for their short-sightedness, narrow-mindedness, excessive American Exceptionalism, “Know-nothingism”, xenophobia and subtle racism.

But when a well-respected online journal re-posts an article by the chief anti-medical travel opponent in the workers’ comp world, it is high time that the medical travel industry speak up and defend itself.

As a tireless advocate for medical travel in workers’ comp, I am leading the charge that you, my friends around the world must do for yourselves.

You will notice the title of this post. This is what the individual in question calls those countries that provide medical travel services. Also, please note that by using this canard as my title, I am in no way insulting Turkey, or any other nation that markets their medical care to the world.

There is fair criticism of Turkey and many other countries in the medical travel industry, but those criticisms are meant to improve the services and to correct the mistakes of the past, and not to pass judgement on them.

But when someone uses a term such as ‘Turkishmaninacanstan’, it conjures up the worse images of third world poverty and backwardness in all aspects of life of the nations so broadly brushed with that epithet.

The individual who coined that despicable name is a self-styled, right-wing American conservative who lives on the gulf coast of the state of Florida, a region where many individuals like him retire to after their careers have declined to play golf.

While this individual may not be one of those just yet, the fact that he dismisses new ideas, that he insults the millions of men and women around the world who are trying to offer real low cost medical care at equal or better quality, that he insults the very nations who could use those resources they are spending to bring medical travelers to their countries as a way to improve their balance of trade and economic power in the global economy, when they could be used to raise the living standards of their poorest citizens, is something that can no longer go unanswered.

So, I ask all of you, doctors, nurses, travel agents, medical tourism promoters and facilitators who are legitimately trying to provide better medical care at lower cost to all of the world’s citizens, to speak up and tell this individual and those like him, that your countries are not ‘Turkishmaninacanstans’, and that you are developing world-class medical facilities that outshine those in his own country, and mine.

Basically, he is calling you con artists and frauds, and that is something that only you can stop.

Three weeks ago, I wrote a piece about how the Zika virus may affect medical travel to Latin America and the Caribbean.

Today, Business Insurance.com (article unavailable online due to error) reported that the World Bank warned that the spread of the Zika virus across Latin America and the Caribbean is expected to cost those regions about $3.5 billion in forgone economic output.

As a follow-up to my last post on the Zika virus and what the medical travel industry should be doing about it, I want to direct you to what Shelby Livingston wrote last week in Business Insurance.

She said that American health care insurers are closely monitoring the virus, educating their members, but have not yet figured out what it will cost payers.

A spokesperson for Aetna said, “We are in contact with the Centers for Disease Control, U.S. federal agencies, state and local health departments, health care providers and others so that we can provide timely, relevant and accurate information from the CDC to our members and customers. Additionally, we have distributed health information from the CDC to our disease management and case management teams to help support our members.”

The statement also said, that it is premature to predict health care costs associated with the Zika virus.

Anthem posted a message on Twitter, Livingston reported, cautioning travelers to the Caribbean to heed the CDC’s warnings; UnitedHealth Group has published updates on its website, but did not respond to her requests for comment on how they are responding to the virus, or whether they are projecting costs associated with the virus.

As I noted in my post last week, this virus may have a chilling effect on your business and the health of your patients. It is advisable to monitor what the US insurers say and do going forward.

By now, we have all heard about the Zika outbreak in Brazil that has led to many children being born with microcephaly, a disease that causes the baby to be born with a small head and brain.

But with the World Health Organization’s announcement that it is a global health emergency, and that several cases have been found throughout other Western hemisphere countries and the US, one through sexual contact in Texas, the medical travel industry needs to be concerned that they prepare their patients to deal with the possibility of infection.

In addition, medical travel facilitators should work closely with the medical personnel in the target destination to guarantee that not only is the area free of the mosquitoes that carry the disease, but that the facilities are capable of handling an outbreak of Zika, especially if foreign patients are involved.

Medical travel facilitators should also take precautions to ascertain if patients are, or will become pregnant before going to any of these countries where Zika has been found.

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Quotes

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”

– Muhammad Ali

“If people are not laughing at your goals, your goals are too small..”

– Azim Premji

“Those who say your dreams are ridiculous have given up on theirs.”

– Unknown

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

– Thomas Carlyle

“As the work is done for the employer, and therefore ultimately for the public, it is a bitter injustice that it should be the wage-worker himself and his wife and children who bear the whole penalty.”

– President Theodore Roosevelt, 1907

To permit every lawless capitalist, every law-defying corporation, to take any action, no matter how iniquitous, in the effort to secure an improper profit and to build up privilege, would be ruinous to the Republic and would mark the abandonment of the effort to secure in the industrial world the spirit of democratic fair dealing.

– Theodore Roosevelt, 1908

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

– John Kenneth Galbraith

“Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of their right to join the union of their choice.”

– Dwight D. Eisenhower

“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

– Thomas Jefferson

“Mischief springs from the power which the moneyed interest derives from a paper currency which they are able to control, from the multitude of corporations with exclusive privileges… which are employed altogether for their benefit.”

– Andrew Jackson

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong it’s reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

– Abraham Lincoln

“Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”

“Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.”

– Karl Marx

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, NOT on fighting the old, but on BUILDING the NEW.”

– Socrates

“Every man takes the limits of his field of vision for the limits of the world”

– Arthur Schopenhauer

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

– Arthur Schopenhauer

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

– Winston Churchill

“No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.”

– Robin Williams

“There can be no equality or opportunity if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they cannot alter, control, or singly cope with.”

– Woodrow Wilson

“Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.”

– John Stuart Mill

“The masters of the government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States.”

– Woodrow Wilson

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.”

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health [care] is the most shocking and inhuman[e]…”